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New Media & Society
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Online privacy as legal safeguard: the relationship among consumer, online portal, and privacy policies

Jan Fernback

Temple UniverSity, USA, fernback{at}temple.edu

Zizi Papacharissi

Temple UniverSity, USA

Several surveys attest to growing public concerns regarding privacy, aggravated by the diffusion of information technologies. A policy of self-regulation that allows individual companies to implement self-designed privacy statements is prevalent in the United States. These statements rarely provide specific privacy guarantees that personal information will be kept confidential. This study provides a discourse analysis of such privacy statements to determine their overall efficacy as a policy measure. The in-depth analysis of privacy statements revealed that they offer little protection to the consumer, instead serving to authorize business practices which allow companies to profit from consumer data. Using public good theory as a foundation, policy implications are discussed.

Key Words: internet • privacy • regulation

New Media & Society, Vol. 9, No. 5, 715-734 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1461444807080336
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